PD Editorial: A crummy ‘cromnibus’ funding bill

The benefit of the 2015 omnibus bill now headed for the president’s desk is that it prevents another government shutdown - as well as the prolonged threat of one.

But the positives end there for the $1.1 trillion appropriations package approved by the House and Senate last week.

This so-called “CRominbus bill” is so laden with dubious add-ons, including a menacing perk for Wall Street banks and a boosting of limits on campaign donations from the uber rich, as to render the specter of another shutdown threat more appealing

Chief among the problem provisions is a rollback of a key part of the 2009 Dodd-Frank financial reform initiative that prevents government-insured deposits from being used to finance high-risk derivatives. The provision required banks that deal with such investments to create subsidiaries to do their trading with their own money. The rule essentially required banks to build a firewall between the banks’ trading operations and consumer funds, which are federally insured.

This rollback chips away at that wall, putting the nation at risk of more bailouts in the future. Moreover it casts further doubt on whether the U.S. has really learned from the mistakes that led to the economic collapse seven years ago and whether it’s committed to holding Wall Street companies accountable for ensuring the problems are not repeated.

This is the primary reason why both North Coast congressional representatives, Mike Thompson, D-Santa Rosa, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, opposed this bill, and with good reason.

In a statement issued after the vote, Thompson said the provision “is a windfall for Wall Street and will allow them to once again gamble with taxpayer’s money.”

During a visit with The Press Democrat Editorial Board on Monday, Huffman said he believed the bill “was too steep price to pay” for a promise of meeting the government deadline for a funding bill. “The last thing we need to be doing is giving more favors to Wall Street,” said Huffman. “It’s a terrible message.”

Both legislators also were strongly opposed to another aspect of the bill that would boost the amounts a single contributor could give to either party committee by 500 to 700 percent. During each two-year election cycle, donors currently are limited to giving $129,600 to the Democratic and Republican national committees and $64,000 to the parties’ House and Senate committees. The new rules would boost those limits to $648,000 and $453,600 respectively.

Given the public blowback to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates to money in politics, Congress has no excuse for compounding the problems by cutting loose these limits on single donations to party committees. That probably explains why it was added to the bill after hours and behind closed doors, thus ensuring no one could be held responsible for the language.

As Huffman noted, “This is a lousy way to make policy.”

Yes, the government will be open for business on Monday without fear of closure. But as this bill demonstrates, there are worse things.